EPA Eases Rules on Coal Industry Despite Climate Change Warnings

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency acted again Thursday to ease rules on the sagging U.S. coal industry, this time scaling back what would have been a tough control on climate-changing emissions from any new coal plants.

The latest Trump administration targeting of legacy Obama administration efforts to slow climate change comes in the wake of multiplying warnings from the agency’s scientists and others about the accelerating pace of global warming.

In a ceremony Thursday at the agency, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler signed a proposal to dismantle a 2015 rule that any new coal power plants include cutting-edge techniques to capture the carbon dioxide from their smokestacks.

Wheeler called the Obama rules “excessive burdens” for the coal industry.

Asked about the harm that coal plant emission do people and the environment, Wheeler responded, “Having cheap electricity helps human health.”

Janet McCabe, an EPA air official under the Obama administration, and others challenged that. MaCabe in a statement cited the conclusion of the EPA’s own staff earlier this year that pending rollbacks on existing coal plants would cause thousands of early deaths from the fine soot and dangerous particles and gases.

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